When he served as mayor of Charlotte, Pat McCrory championed a campaign for light rail service in North Carolina’s largest city.
As a result, thousands of commuters ride the train daily in one of the bigger government success stories of the early 21st century in North Carolina.
McCrory soon will launch a campaign to address more critical needs. The governor has asked the N.C. General Assembly to support a $1.5 billion bond referendum to refurbish and build North Carolina roads. He’ll seek another $1.5 billion bond to bring infrastructure up to date at campuses in the University of North Carolina system.
Not only will the governor’s initiative address needs already being felt in one of the faster growing states in the country; it will help pave the way for increased demand in years to come.
But McCrory faces a heck of a fight. Although the N.C. House and N.C. Senate are dominated by fellow Republicans, the governor has had a tough time moving the needle on many of the requests he’s made of the legislature thus far. Even a favorite bill as innocuous as legislation to thwart so-called puppy mills has stalled in the General Assembly.
Asking legislators to give the green light to a referendum for $3 billion worth of bonds is a whole new ball game.
But it’s an important ball game. The population of North Carolina soon will reach 10 million people. That’s an awful lot of traffic streaming across state highways, and the gasoline tax – North Carolina’s chief mechanism for generating money to maintain roads – already is woefully inadequate. Similarly, as North Carolina competes with other states and other countries for the best and brightest young minds to attend its colleges and universities, campus buildings and infrastructure must be up to the task.
The bond campaign McCrory launches this year in many ways will act as a prelude to his bid for re-election in 2016. If he doesn’t find a warm reception among Republican leaders in Raleigh, he’s likely to find the campaign trail next year cold and rocky.
